Inshorts Raises USD 60mn From Vy Capital, Others

Inshorts, which operates eponymous news app Inshorts and location-based social media platform Public, has secured USD 60mn in funding from Vy Capital with participation from existing investors. With this, the company has raised USD 140mn in the last year from investors including Addition, Tiger Global, SIG, A91, and Tanglin Venture Partners.

“The world is changing every minute, and each one of us has an inherent desire to remain updated about these changes. Both Inshorts App and Public App are aimed to help some of these people in their quest of keeping themselves informed and we are thrilled to have Vy Capital join us in our journey,” said Co-Founder & CEO Azhar Iqubal.

“We are excited to partner with Azhar and team in their journey to build one of the largest content platforms out of India, running two market-leading properties with a rapidly growing user base. We look forward to working closely with the company and the team as it enters the next phase of scaling” said Vamsi Duvvuri, Partner, Vy Capital.

Inshorts pioneered the concept of ’60 words news’ eight years ago and is currently India’s largest short-form news app. It has the best in class retention and a strong user base in the Tier 1 cities of the country. The company launched Public App, a location-based social media app, two years ago. “We believe that all of us want to remain connected to our locality as much as we want to remain connected to our friends and family. While many large platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have been built for the latter, the problem of connecting to locality remains unsolved and Public is our attempt for the same,” added Iqubal on the thought behind launching Public.

The public has amassed a large user base in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities of the country and is available in all regional languages. It has already overtaken Twitter in India (Source: Sensor Tower) and is the fastest growing app in the segment in India